ONAKOYA AND THE NIGERIAN SPIRIT

Tunde Onakoya’s rare exploits in chess hold lessons for the youths

Nigerian chess master, Tunde Onakoya, has become a global celebrity after breaking the Guinness World Record for the longest consecutive hours of playing chess. A board member of the New York City-based non-profit ‘The Gift of Chess’ and the founder of ‘Chess in Slum Initiative’, Onakoya is Nigeria’s number 13th chess player and rated 2,165 in standard chess and 2,065 in blitz chess. But he played 60 hours of chess last week in New York, United States, to obliterate the previous record of 56 hours, 9 minutes and 37 seconds held since 2018 by Norwegians Hallvard Haug Flatebo and Slur Ferkingstad.

Onakoya, who will celebrate his 30th birthday on 6 October this year, learned to play chess from a barber’s shop in a suburb of Ikorodu, Lagos State. Having grown up in the neighbourhood where life was challenging, he knew the true meaning of deprivation. It was this background that informed his ‘Chess in Slums Africa Initiative’ in 2018 as a volunteer driven non-profit organisation. The aim is to empower young children in impoverished communities like Majidun (Ikorodu), Makoko (Yaba) and Oshodi by introducing Chess to them. He somehow got partnership with Chess.com in 2020 and began to use the game as an educational tool for classrooms. A year later, his initiative secured scholarships for 20 children and trained over 200 others.

Interestingly, one of these children is a 10-year-old boy with cerebral palsy who won the tournament in Makoko and got introduced to Lagos State Governor, Babajide Sanwo-Olu. Ferdinand played chess with the Governor for 40 minutes and displayed the skills of a prodigy to the admiration of Sanwo-Olu who gave him scholarship. Speaking on what he achieved with Ferdinand, Onakoya explained: “Now, his education is being sponsored by the Governor. I went to bed that night with smile on my face. I feel fulfilled. I was glad I could make that kind of impact. I imagined what would have happened if I had given up on the project when things were tough, and I was terribly broke.”

What is remarkable about Onakoya is that the whole idea is about helping others. With his plan to train over one million African children in Nigeria, Kenya, and other parts of the continent within the next five years, one cannot but praise the effort of this uncommon Nigerian who has overcome his little beginning to become a world record holder. It is a testament to the ‘Can Do’ spirit that set many of our citizens apart, even amid daunting challenges. President Bola Tinubu alluded to this while applauding Onakoya for setting a new world record and sounding the gong of Nigeria’s resilience, self-belief, and ingenuity. “Onakoya has shown a streak customary among Nigeria’s youth population, the audacity to make good change happen…even from corners of disadvantage,” the president said.

With Onakoya’s feat, we hope the sports authorities in Nigeria will now begin to pay more attention to the so-called ‘lesser sports.’ But there is a lesson in his story for many Nigerians of his generation. Onakoya came from a family that was too impoverished to afford his school fees after completing his primary education, prompting him to stay at home for two years. During this period, his mother worked as a housekeeper to save for his education. This humble beginning is a ready fodder for his Chess in Slum project, which he launched in Lagos to offer sidelined young people, many of whom are not in school, the platform to work and support their families. The inspiring grain of his rise to stardom is that anybody with focus and perseverance can overcome poverty and become whatever they want to be.